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THE  FEAST 
OF  ST  FRIEND 

A  CHRISTMAS  BOOK 

V 


BY 

ARNOLD  BENNETT 

^u  thorof  "The  Old  Wives'  Tale " 
"Buried  Alive"  Etc.,  Etc. 
^  7o  ^S 


GEORGE  H.DORAN 
COMPANY 


Copyright,   1911, 
By  George  H.  Doran  Company 


2iSl 


(^  0  o"3) 
343   P 


CONTENTS: 

Chap.  Page 

I.     The  Fact  1 

II.     The  Reason  18 

III.     The  Solstice  and  Good- 
will     - 25 

IV.     The    Appositeness    of 

Christmas  87 

V.    Defence  of  Feasting 49 

VI.     To  Revitalize  the  Fes- 
tival .„. - - 61 

VII.     The  Gift  Of  Oneself  ......  78 

VIII.     The  Feast  of  St.  Friend  85 

IX.     The  Reaction  —  97 

X.     On  the  Last  Day  of  the 

Year 109 


CHAPTER 
ONE 

THE  FACT 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


ONE 

THE   FAC*1* 
2.  7  O  ^5' 

SOMETHING  has  happened  to 
Christmas,  or  to  our  hearts ;  or  to 
both.  In  order  to  be  convinced  of  this 
it  is  only  necessary  to  compare  the 
present  with  the  past.  In  the  old  days 
of  not  so  long  ago  the  festival  began  to 
excite  us  in  November.  For  weeks  the 
house  rustled  with  charming  and  thrill- 
ing secrets,  and  with  the  furtive  noises 
of  paper  parcels  being  wrapped  and 
unwrapped;  the  house  was  a  whisper- 
ing gallery.  The  tension  of  expect- 
ancy increased  to  such  a  point  that 
there  was  a  positive  danger  of  the  cord 
snapping  before  it  ought  to  snap.  On 
[11 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

the  Eve  we  went  to  bed  with  no  hope  of 
settled  sleep.  We  knew  that  we  should 
be  wakened  and  kept  awake  by  the 
waits  singing  in  the  cold;  and  we  were 
glad  to  be  kept  awake  so.  On  the  su- 
preme day  we  came  downstairs  hiding 
delicious  yawns,  and  cordially  pretend- 
ing that  we  had  never  been  more  fit. 
The  day  was  different  from  other  days ; 
it  had  a  unique  romantic  quality,  tonic, 
curative  of  all  ills.  On  that  day  even 
the  tooth-ache  vanished,  retiring  far  in- 
to the  wilderness  with  the  spiteful 
word,  the  venomous  thought,  and  the 
unlovely  gesture.  We  sang  with  gusto 
"Christians  awake,  salute  the  happy 
morn."  We  did  salute  the  happy  morn. 
And  when  all  the  parcels  were  defi- 
nitely unpacked,  and  the  secrets  of  all 
hearts  disclosed,  we  spent  the  rest  of 
the  happy  morn  in  waiting,  candidly 
12] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

greedy,  for  the  first  of  the  great  meals. 
And  then  we  ate,  and  we  drank,  and 
we  ate  again ;  with  no  thought  of  nutri- 
tion, nor  of  reasonableness,  nor  of  the  ' 
morrow,  nor  of  dyspepsia.  We  ate  and 
drank  without  fear  and  without  shame, 
in  the  sheer,  abandoned  ecstasy  of  cele- 
bration. And  by  means  of  motley 
paper  headgear,  fit  only  for  a  carnival, 
we  disguised  ourselves  in  the  most  ab- 
surd fashions,  and  yet  did  not  make 
ourselves  seriously  ridiculous;  for  ridi- 
cule is  in  the  vision,  not  in  what  is  seen. 
And  we  danced  and  sang  and  larked, 
until  we  could  no  more.  And  finally 
we  chanted  a  song  of  ceremony,  and 
separated;  ending  the  day  as  we  had 
commenced  it,  with  salvoes  of  good 
wishes.  And  the  next  morning  we 
were  indisposed  and  enfeebled;  and  we 
did  not  care;    we  suffered  gladly;    we 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

had  our  pain's  worth,  and  more.    This 
was  the  past. 

*  *  *  ♦ 

Even  today  the  spirit  and  rites  of 
ancient  Christmas  are  kept  up,  more 
or  less  in  their  full  rigour  and  splen- 
dour, by  a  race  of  beings  that  is  scat- 
tered over  the  whole  earth.  This  race, 
mysterious,  masterful,  conservative, 
imaginative,  passionately  sincere,  ar- 
riving from  w^e  know  not  where,  dis- 
solving before  our  eyes  we  know  not 
how,  has  its  way  in  spite  of  us.  I  mean 
the  children.  By  virtue  of  the  chil- 
dren's faith,  the  reindeer  are  still 
tramping  the  sky,  and  Christmas  Day 
is  still  something  above  and  beyond  a 
day  of  the  week;  it  is  a  day  out  of  the 
week.  We  have  to  sit  and  pretend; 
and  with  disillusion  in  our  souls  we  do 
pretend.     At  Christmas,  it  is  not  the 

[4] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

children  who  make-believe;  it  is  our- 
selves. Who  does  not  remember  the 
first  inkling  of  a  suspicion  that  Christ- 
mas Day  was  after  all  a  day  rather 
like  any  other  day?  In  the  house  of 
my  memories,  it  was  the  immemorial 
duty  of  my  brother  on  Christmas 
morning,  before  anything  else  what- 
ever happened,  to  sit  down  to  the  organ 
and  perform  "Christians  Awake"  with 
all  possible  stops  drawn.  He  had  to  do 
it.  Tradition,  and  the  will  that  ema- 
nated from  the  best  bedroom,  combined 
to  force  him  to  do  it.  One  Christmas 
morning,  as  he  was  preparing  the  stops, 
he  glanced  aside  at  me  with  a  supercili- 
ous curl  of  the  lips,  and  the  curl  of  my 
lips  silently  answered.  It  was  as  if 
he  had  said:  "I  condescend  to  this,"  and 
as  if  I  had  said:   "So  do  I." 

Such  a  moment  comes  to  most  of  us 

[5] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

of  this  generation.  And  thencefor- 
ward the  change  in  us  is  extraordinarily 
rapid.  The  next  thing  we  know  is  that 
the  institution  of  waits  is  a  rather  an- 
noying survival  which  at  once  deprives 
us  of  sleep  and  takes  money  out  of  our 
pockets.  And  then  Christmas  is  glut- 
tony and  indigestion  and  expensive- 
ness  and  quarter-day,  and  Christmas 
cards  are  a  tax  and  a  nuisance,  and 
present-giving  is  a  heavier  tax  and  a 
nuisance.  And  we  feel  self-conscious 
and  foolish  as  we  sing  "Auld  Lang 
Syne."  And  what  a  blessing  it  will 
be  when  the  "festivities"  (as  they  are 
misleadingly  called)  are  over,  and  we 
can  settle  down  into  commonsense 
again ! 

I  do  not  mean  that  our  hearts  are 
black  with  despair  on  Christmas  Day. 

[6] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

I  do  not  mean  that  we  do  not  enjoy 
ourselves  on  Christmas  Day.  There 
is  no  doubt  that,  with  the  inspiriting 
help  of  the  mysterious  race,  and  by  the 
force  of  tradition,  and  by  our  own  gift 
of  pretending,  we  do  still  very  much 
enjoy  ourselves  on  Christmas  Day. 
What  I  mean  to  insinuate,  and  to  as- 
sert, is  that  beneath  this  enjoyment  is 
the  disconcerting  and  distressing  con- 
viction of  unreality,  of  non-significance, 
of  exaggerated  and  even  false  senti- 
ment. What  I  mean  is  that  we  have  to 
brace  and  force  ourselves  up  to  the  en- 
joyment of  Christmas.  We  have  to 
induce  deliberately  the  "Christmas  feel- 
ing." We  have  to  remind  ourselves 
that  "it  will  never  do"  to  let  the  hearti- 
ness of  Christmas  be  impaired.  The 
peculiarity  of  our  attitude  towards 
Christmas,  which  at  worst  is  a  vaca- 

m 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

tion,  may  be  clearly  seen  by  contrasting 
it  with  our  attitude  towards  another 
vacation — the  summer  holiday.  We  do 
not  have  to  brace  and  force  ourselves 
up  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  summer 
holiday.  We  experience  no  difficulty 
in  inducing  the  holiday  feeling.  There 
is  no  fear  of  the  institution  of  the  sum- 
mer holiday  losing  its  heartiness.  Nor 
do  we  need  the  example  of  children  to 
aid  us  in  savouring  the  August  "festivi- 
ties." 

*  «  4c  * 

If  any  person  here  breaks  in  with 
the  statement  that  I  am  deceived  and 
the  truth  is  not  in  me,  and  that  Christ- 
mas stands  just  where  it  did  in  the 
esteem  of  all  right-minded  people,  and 
that  he  who  casts  a  doubt  on  the  hearti- 
ness of  Christmas  is  not  right-minded, 
let  that  person  read  no  more.     This 

[8] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

book  is  not  written  for  him.  And  if 
any  other  person,  kindlier,  condescend- 
ingly protests  that  there  is  nothing 
wrong  with  Christmas  except  my  ad- 
vancing age,  let  that  person  read  no 
more.  This  book  is  not  written  for 
him,  either.  It  is  written  for  persons 
who  can  look  facts  cheerfully  in  the 
face.  That  Christmas  has  lost  some  of 
its  magic  is  a  fact  that  the  common 
sense  of  the  western  hemisphere  will 
not  dispute.  To  blink  the  fact  is  in- 
fantile. To  confront  it,  to  try  to  under- 
stand it,  to  reckon  with  it,  and  to 
obviate  any  evil  that  may  attach  to  it — 
this  course  alone  is  meet  for  an  hon- 
est man.   1 


9] 


CHAPTER 
TWO 

THE  REASON 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


TWO 

THE  REASON 

rthe  decadence  of  Christmas  were 
a  purely  subjective  phenomenon, 
confined  to  the  breasts  of  those  of 
us  who  have  ceased  to  be  children 
then  it  follows  that  Christmas  has 
always  been  decadent,  because  peo- 
ple have  always  been  ceasing  to 
be  children.  It  follows  also  that  the 
festival  was  originally  got  up  by  dis- 
illusioned adults,  for  the  benefit  of  the 
children.  Which  is  totally  absurd. 
Adults  have  never  yet  invented  any  in- 
stitution, festival  or  diversion  specially 
for  the  benefit  of  children.  The  egoism 
of  adults  makes  such  an  effort  impos- 

[131 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

sible,  and  the  ingenuity  and  pliancy  of 
children  make  it  unnecessary.  The 
pantomime,  for  example,  which  is  now 
pre-eminently  a  diversion  for  children, 
was  created  by  adults  for  the  amusement 
of  adults.  Children  have  merely  ac- 
cepted it  and  appropriated  it.  Chil- 
dren, being  helpless,  are  of  course  fatal- 
ists and  imitators.  They  take  what 
comes,  and  they  do  the  best  they  can 
with  it.  And  when  they  have  made 
something  their  own  that  was  adult, 
they  stick  to  it  like  leeches. 

They  are  terrific  Tories,  are  children ; 
they  are  even  reactionary!  They 
powerfully  object  to  changes.  What 
they  most  admire  in  a  pantomime  is 
the  oldest  part  of  it,  the  only  true  pan- 
tomime— the  harlequinade!  Hence  the 
very  nature  of  children  is  a  proof  that 
what  Christmas  is  now  to  them,  it  was 

[14] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

in  the  past  to  their  elders.  If  they  now 
feel  and  exhibit  faith  and  enthusiasm 
in  the  practice  of  the  festival,  be  sure 
that,  at  one  time,  adults  felt  and  ex- 
hibited the  same  faith  and  enthusiasm 
— yea,  and  more!  For  in  neither  faith 
nor  enthusiasm  can  a  child  compete 
with  a  convinced  adult.  No  child  could 
believe  in  anything  as  passionately  as 
the  modern  millionaire  believes  in 
money,  or  as  the  modern  social  re- 
former believes  in  the  virtue  of  Acts 
of  Parliament. 

Another  and  a  crowning  proof  that 
Christmas  has  been  diminished  in  our 
hearts  lies  in  the  fiery  lyrical  splendour 
of  the  old  Christmas  hymns.  Those 
hymns  were  not  written  by  people  who 
made-believe  at  Christmas  for  the 
pleasure    of    youngsters.      They    were 

[15] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

written    by    devotees.     And    this    age 
could  not  have  produced  them. 

*  *  *  * 

Nol  The  decay  of  the  old  Christmas 
spirit  among  adults  is  undeniable,  and 
its  cause  is  fairly  plain.  It  is  due  to  the 
labours  of  a  set  of  idealists — men  who 
cared  not  for  money,  nor  for  glory,  nor 
for  anything  except  their  ideal.  Their 
ideal  was  to  find  out  the  truth  concern- 
ing nature  and  concerning  human  his- 
tory; and  they  sacrificed  all — they  sac- 
rificed the  peace  of  mind  of  whole  gen- 
erations— to  the  pleasure  of  slaking 
their  ardour  for  truth.  For  them  the 
most  important  thing  in  the  world  was 
the  satisfaction  of  their  curiosity.  They 
would  leave  naught  alone;  and  they 
scorned  consequences.  Useless  to  cry 
to  them:  "That  is  holy.  Touch  it  not!" 
I  mean  the  great  philosophers  and  men 

[16] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

of  science — especially  the  geologists — 
of  the  nineteenth  century.  ^I  mean 
such  utterly  pure-minded  men  as  Lyell, 
Spencer,  Darwin  and  Huxley.  They 
inaugurated  the  mighty  age  of  doubt 
and  scepticism.  They  made  it  impos- 
sible to  believe  all  manner  of  things 
which  before  them  none  had  questioned. 
The  movement  spread  until  uneasiness 
was  everywhere  in  the  realm  of  thought, 
and  people  walked  about  therein  fear- 
somely,  as  in  a  land  subject  to  earth- 
quakes. It  was  as  if  people  had  said: 
"We  don't  know  what  will  topple  next. 
Let's  raze  everything  to  the  ground, 
and  then  we  shall  feel  safer."  And 
there  came  a  moment  after  which  no- 
body could  ever  look  at  a  picture  of  the 
Nativity  in  the  old  way.  Pictures  of 
the  Nativity  were  admired  perhaps  as 
much    as    ever,  but    for  the  exquisite 

[17] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

beauty  of  their  naivete,  the  charm  of 
their  old-world  simplicity,  not  as  artis- 
tic renderings  of  fact. 

/-  *  *  *  * 

'An  age  of  scepticism  has  its  faults, 
like  any  other  age,  though  certain  per- 
sons have  pretended  the  contrary. 
Having  been  compelled  to  abandon  its 
belief  in  various  statements  of  alleged 
fact,  it  lumps  principles  and  ideals 
with  alleged  facts,  and  hastily  decides 
not  to  believe  in  anything  at  all.  It 
gives  up  faith,  it  despises  faith,  in  spite 
of  the  warning  of  its  greatest  philos- 
ophers, including  Herbert  Spencer, 
that  faith  of  some  sort  is  necessary  to  a 
satisfactory  existence  in  a  universe  full 
of  problems  which  science  admits  it  can 
never  solve.  None  were  humbler  than 
the  foremost  scientists  about  the  nar- 
rowness of  the  field  of  knowledge,  as 

[18] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

compared  with  the  immeasurability  of 
the  field  of  faith.  But  the  warning  has 
been  ignored,  as  warnings  nearly  al- 
ways are.  Faith  is  at  a  discount.  And 
the  qualities  which  go  with  faith  are  at 
a  discount;  such  as  enthusiasm,  spon- 
taneity, ebullition,  lyricism,  and  self- 
expression  in  general.  Sentimentality 
is  held  in  such  horror  that  people  are 
afraid  even  of  sentiment.  Their  secret 
cry  is:  "Give  us  something  in  which 
we  can  believe." 

4:  *  *  * 

They  forget,  in  their  confusion,  that 
the  great  principles,  spiritual  and 
moral,  remain  absolutely  intact.  They 
forget  that,  after  all  the  shattering  dis- 
coveries of  science  and  conclusions  of 
philosophy,  mankind  has  still  to  live 
with  dignity  amid  hostile  nature,  and 
in     the     presence    of   an    unknowable 

[19] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

power  and  that  mankind  can  only  suc- 
ceed in  this  tremendous  feat  by  the  ex- 
ercise of  faith  and  of  that  mutual  good- 
will which  is  based  in  sincerity  and 
charity.  /They  forget  that,  while  facts 
are  nothing,  these  principles  are  every- 
thing. And  so,  at  that  epoch  of  the 
year  which  nature  herself  has  ordained 
for  the  formal  recognition  of  the  situa- 
tion of  mankind  in  the  universe  and  of 
its  resulting  duties  to  itself  and  to  the 
Unknown — at  that  epoch,  they  bewail, 
sadly  or  impatiently  or  cynically:  "Oh! 
The  bottom  has  been  knocked  out  of 
Christmas  I" 

*  *  iK  4: 

But  the  bottom  has  not  been  knocked 
out  of  Christmas.  And  people  know  it. 
Somewhere,  in  the  most  central  and 
mysterious  fastness  of  their  hearts,  they 
know  it.  If  they  were  not,  in  spite  of 
themselves,     convinced     of     it,     why 

[20] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

should  they  be  so  pathetically  anxious 
to  keep  alive  in  themselves,  and  to 
foster  in  their  children,  the  Christmas 
spirit?  Obviously,  a  profound  instinct 
is  for  ever  reminding  them  that,  with- 
out the  Christmas  spirit,  they  are  lost. 
iThe  forms  of  faith  change,  but  the 
spirit  of  faith,  which  is  the  Christmas 
spirit,  is  immortal  amid  its  endless 
vicissitudes.  At  a  crisis  of  change,  faith 
is  weakened  for  the  majority;  for  the 
majority  it  may  seem  to  be  dead.  It  is 
conserved,  however,  in  the  hearts  of  the 
few  supremely  great  and  in  the  hearts 
of  the  simple.  The  supremely  great 
are  hidden  from  the  majority;  but  the 
simple  are  seen  of  all  men,  and  them 
we  encourage,  often  without  knowing 
why,  to  be  the  depositaries  of  that 
which  we  cannot  ourselves  guard,  but 
which  we  dimly  feel  to  be  indispensable 
to  our  safety. 

121] 


CHAPTER 
THREE 


THE  SOLSTICE 
AND  GOOD  WILL 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


THREE 

THE   SOLSTICE   AND   GOOD    WILL 

IN  order  to  see  that  there  is  under- 
lying Christmas  an  idea  of  faith 
which  will  at  any  rate  last  as  long  as 
the  planet  lasts,  it  is  only  necessary  to 
ask  and  answer  the  question:  "Why 
was  the  Christmas  feast  fixed  for  the 
twenty-fifth  of  December?"  For  it  is 
absolutely  certain,  and  admitted  by 
everybody  of  knowledge,  that  Christ 
was  not  born  on  the  twenty-fifth  of 
December.  Those  disturbing  impas- 
sioned inquirers  after  truth,  who  will 
not  leave  us  peaceful  in  our  ignorance, 
have  settled  that  for  us,  by  pointing 
out,    among    other    things,    that    the 

[25] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

twenty-fifth  of  December  falls  in  the 
very  midst  of  the  Palestine  rainy  sea- 
son, and  that,  therefore,  shepherds  were 
assuredly  not  on  that  date  watching 
their  flocks  by  night. 

♦  *  *  * 

Christians  were  not,  at  first,  united 
in  the  celebration  of  Christmas.  Some 
kept  Christmas  in  January,  others  in 
April,  others  in  May.  It  was  a  pre- 
Christian  force  which  drove  them  all 
into  agreement  upon  the  twenty-fifth 
of  December.  Just  as  they  wisely  took 
the  Christmas  tree  from  the  Roman 
Saturnalia,  so  they  took  the  date  of 
their  festival  from  the  universal  pre- 
Christian  festival  of  the  winter  solstice. 
Yule,  when  mankind  celebrated  the 
triumph  of  the  sun  over  the  powers  of 
darkness,  when  the  night  begins  to  de- 
crease and  the  day  to  increase,  when 

[26] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

the  year  turns,  and  hope  is  born  again 
because  the  worst  is  over.  No  more 
suitably  symbolic  moment  could  have 
been  chosen  for  a  festival  of  faith,  good- 
will and  joy.  And  the  appositeness  of 
the  moment  is  just  as  perfect  in  this  era 
of  electric  light  and  central  heating,  as 
it  was  in  the  era  of  Virgil,  who,  by  the 
way,  described  a  Chi'istmas  tree.  We 
shall  say  this  year,  with  exactly  the 
same  accents  of  relief  and  hope  as  our 
pagan  ancestors  used,  and  as  the 
woaded  savage  used:  "The  days  will 
begin  to  lengthen  now!"  For,  while 
we  often  falsely  fancy  that  we  have 
subjugated  nature  to  our  service,  the 
fact  is  that  we  are  as  irremediably  as 

ever  at  the  mercy  of  nature. 

*  *  *  m 

Indeed,  the  attitude  of  us  moderns 
towards  the  forces  by  which  our  exist- 

[27] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

ence  is  governed  ought  to  be,  and  prob- 
ably is,  more  reverent  and  awe-struck 
than  that  of  the  earlier  world.  The  dis- 
coveries of  science  have  at  once  quick- 
ened our  imagination  and  compelled 
us  to  admit  that  what  we  know  is  the 
merest  trifle.  The  pagan  in  his  ignor- 
ance explained  everything.  Our  knowl- 
edge has  only  deepened  the  mystery, 
and  all  that  we  shall  learn  will  but 
deepen  it  further.  We  can  explain  the 
solstice.  We  are  aware  with  absolute 
certitude  that  the  solstice  and  the 
equinox  and  the  varying  phenomena 
of  the  seasons  are  due  to  the  fact  that 
the  plane  of  the  equator  is  tilted  at  a 
slight  angle  to  the  plane  of  the  ecliptic. 
When  we  put  on  the  first  overcoat  in 
autumn,  and  when  we  give  orders  to  let 
the  furnace  out  in  spring,  we  know 
that  we  are  arranging  our  lives  in  ac- 

[28] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

cordance  with  that  angle.  And  we  are 
quite  duly  proud  of  our  knowledge. 
And  much  good  does  our  knowledge 
do  us! 

Well,  it  does  do  us  some  good,  and 
in  a  spiritual  way,  too!  For  nobody 
can  even  toy  with  astronomy  without 
picturing  to  himself,  more  clearly  and 
startlingly  than  would  be  otherwise 
possible,  a  revolving  globe  that  whizzes 
through  elemental  space  around  a  ball 
of  fire:  which,  in  turn,  is  rushing  with 
all  its  satellites  at  an  inconceivable 
speed  from  nowhere  to  nowhere;  and 
to  the  surface  of  the  revolving,  whiz- 
zing globe  a  multitude  of  living  things 
desperately  clinging,  and  these  living 
things,  in  the  midst  of  cataclysmic  dan- 
ger, and  between  the  twin  enigmas  of 
birth  and  death,  quarrelling  and  hating 
and     calling     themselves     kings     and 

[29] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

queens  and  millionaires  and  beautiful 
women  and  aristocrats  and  geniuses 
and  lackeys  and  superior  persons! 
Perhaps  the  highest  value  of  astron- 
omy is  that  it  renders  more  vivid  the 
ironical  significance  of  such  a  vision, 
and  thus  brings  home  to  us  the  truth 
that  in  spite  of  all  the  differences  which 
we  have  invented,  mankind  is  a  fellow- 
ship of  brothers,  overshadowed  by  in- 
soluble and  fearful  mysteries,  and  de- 
pendent upon  mutual  goodwill  and 
trust  for  the  happiness  it  may  hope  to 
achieve.  *  *  *  Let  us  remember  that 
Christmas  is,  among  other  things,  the 
winter  solstice,  and  that  the  bottom 
has  not  yet  been  knocked  out  of  the 
winter  solstice,  nor  is  likely  to  be  in  the 
immediate  future! 

9(»  s|C  jp  ^ 

It  is  a  curious  fact  that  the  one  faith 
which  really  does  flourish  and  wax  in 

[30] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

these  days  should  be  faith  in  the  idea  of 
social  justice.  For  social  justice  sim- 
ply means  the  putting  into  practice  of 
goodwill  and  the  recognition  of  the 
brotherhood  of  mankind.  Formerly, 
people  were  enthusiastic  and  altruistic 
for  a  theological  idea,  for  a  national 
idea,  for  a  political  idea.  You  could 
see  men  on  the  rack  for  the  sake  of  a 
dogma;  you  could  see  men  of  a  great 
nation  fitting  out  regiments  and  ruin- 
ing themselves  and  going  forth  to  save 
a  small  nation  from  destruction.  You 
could  see  men  giving  their  lives  to  the 
aggrandisement  of  an  empire.  And 
the  men  who  did  these  tilings  had  the 
best  brains  and  the  quickest  wits  and 
the  warmest  hearts  of  their  time.  But 
today,  whenever  you  meet  a  first-class 
man  who  is  both  enthusiastic  and  al- 
truistic, you  may  be  sure  that  his  pet 

[31] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

scheme  is  neither  theological,  military 

nor  political;  you  may  be  sure  that  he 

has  got  into  his  head  the  notion  that 

some  class  of  persons  somewhere  are 

not  being  treated  fairly,  are  not  being 

treated    with    fraternal    goodwill,    and 

that  he  is  determined  to  put  the  matter 

right,  or  perish. 

*  *  *  * 

In  England,  nearly  all  the  most  in- 
teresting people  are  social  reformers: 
and  the  only  circles  of  society  in  which 
you  are  not  bored,  in  which  there  is  real 
conversation,  are  the  circles  of  social 
reform.  These  people  alone  have  an 
abounding  and  convincing  faith.  Their 
faith  has,  for  example,  convinced  many 
of  the  best  literary  artists  of  the  day, 
with  the  result  that  a  large  proportion 
of  the  best  modern  imaginative  liter- 
ature has  been  inspired  by  the  dream  of 

[32] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

social  justice.  Take  away  that  idea 
from  the  works  of  H.  G.  Wells,  John 
Galsworthy  and  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  and  there  would  be  exactly  noth- 
ing left.  Despite  any  appearance  to  the 
contrary,  therefore,  the  idea  of  univer- 
sal goodwill  is  really  alive  upon  the 
continents  of  this  planet:  more  so,  in- 
deed, than  any  other  idea — for  the  vi- 
tality of  an  idea  depends  far  less  on 
the  numbers  of  people  who  hold  it  than 
on  the  quality  of  the  heart  and  brain  of 
the  people  who  hold  it.  Whether  the 
growth  of  the  idea  is  due  to  the  spirit- 
ual awe  and  humility  which  are  the 
consequence  of  increased  scientific 
knowledge,  I  cannot  say,  and  I  do  not 
seriously  care. 


[33] 


CHAPTER 
FOUR 


THE  APPOSITENESS 
OF  CHRISTMAS 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


FOUR 

THE  APPOSITENESS  OF  CHRISTMAS 

YES, "  you  say,  "I  am  quite  at  one 
with  you  as  to  the  immense 
importance  of  goodwill  in  social  exist- 
ence, and  I  have  the  same  faith  in  it  as 
you  have.  But  why  a  festival?  Why 
eating  and  drinking  and  ceremonies? 
Surely  one  can  have  faith  without  festi- 
vals?" 

The  answer  is  that  one  cannot ;  or  at 
least  that  in  practice,  one  never  does. 
A  disinclination  for  festivals,  a  morbid 
self-conscious  fear  of  letting  oneself  go, 
is  a  sure  sign  of  lack  of  faith.  If  you 
have  not   enough   enthusiasm   for  the 

[37] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

cult  of  goodwill  to  make  you  positively 
desire  to  celebrate  the  cult,  then  your 
faith  is  insufficient  and  needs  fostering 
by  study  and  meditation.  Why,  if  you 
decide  to  found  a  sailing-club  up  your 
creek,  your  very  first  thought  is  to  sig- 
nalise your  faith  in  the  sailing  of  those 
particular  waters  by  a  dinner  and  a 
jollity,  and  you  take  care  that  the 
event  shall  be  an  annual  one!  *  *  * 
You  have  faith  in  your  wife,  and  in 
your  affection  for  her.  Surely  you 
don't  need  a  festival  to  remind  you  of 
that  faith,  you  so  superior  to  human 
weaknesses?  But  you  do!  You  insist 
on  having  it.  And,  if  the  festival  did 
not  happen,  you  would  feel  gloomy 
and  discouraged.  A  birthday  is  a  de- 
vice for  recalling  to  you  in  a  formal 
and  impressive  manner  that  a  certain 
person  still  lives  and  is  in  need  of  good- 

[38] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

will.  It  is  a  device  which  experience 
has  proved  to  be  both  valuable  and 
necessary. 

*  *  if  * 

Real  faith  effervesces ;  it  shoots  forth 
in  every  direction;  it  communicates  it- 
self. And  the  inevitable  result  is  a  fes- 
tival. The  festival  is  anticipated  with 
pleasure,  and  it  is  remembered  with 
pleasure.  And  thus  it  reacts  stimula- 
tingly  on  that  which  gave  it  birth,  as  the 
vitality  of  children  reacts  stimulatingly 
on  the  vitality  of  parents.  It  provides 
a  concrete  symbol  of  that  which  is  in- 
visible and  intangible,  and  mankind  is 
not  yet  so  advanced  in  the  path  of 
spiritual  perfection  that  we  can  afford 
to  dispense  with  concrete  symbols. 
Now,  if  we  maintain  festivals  and 
formalities  for  the  healthy  continuance 
and  honour  of  a  pastime  or  of  a  per- 

[39] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

sonal  affection,  shall  we  not  maintain 
a  festival — and  a  mighty  one — in  be- 
half of  a  faith  which  makes  the  corpor- 
ate human  existence  bearable  amid  the 
menaces  and  mysteries  that  for  ever 
threaten  it, — the  faith  of  imiversal 
goodwill  and  mutual  confidence? 

4c  4:  :i(  * 

If  then,  there  is  to  be  a  festival,  why 
should  it  not  be  the  festival  of  Christ- 
mas? It  can,  indeed,  be  no  other. 
Christmas  is  most  plainly  indicated.  It 
is  dignified  and  made  precious  by  tra- 
ditions which  go  back  much  further 
than  the  Christian  era;  and  it  has  this 
tremendous  advantage — it  exists!  In 
spite  of  our  declining  faith,  it  has  been 
preserved  to  us,  and  here  it  is,  ready  to 
hand.  Not  merely  does  it  fall  at  the 
point  which  uncounted  generations 
have  agreed  to  consider  as  the  turn  of 

[40] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

the  solar  year  and  as  the  rebirth  of 
hope!  It  falls  also  immediately  before 
the  end  of  the  calendar  year,  and  thus 
prepares  us  for  a  fresh  beginning  that 
shall  put  the  old  to  shame.  It  could 
not  be  better  timed.  Further,  its  tra- 
ditional spirit  of  peace  and  goodwill  is 
the  very  spirit  which  we  desire  to  fos- 
ter. And  finally  its  customs — or  at 
any  rate,  its  main  customs — are  well 
designed  to  symbolize  that  spirit.  If 
we  have  allowed  the  despatch  of  Christ- 
mas cards  to  degenerate  into  naught 
but  a  tedious  shuffling  of  paste-boards 
and  overwork  of  post-office  officials, 
the  fault  is  not  in  the  custom  but  in 
ourselves.  The  custom  is  a  most  strik- 
ing one — so  long  as  we  have  sufficient 
imagination  to  remember  vividly  that 
we  are  all  in  the  same  boat — I  mean, 
on  the  same  planet — and  clinging  des- 

[41] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

perately  to  the  flying  ball,  and  depend- 
ent for  daily  happiness  on  one 
another's  good  will!  A  Christmas  card 
sent  by  one  human  being  to  another 
human  being  is  more  than  a  piece  of 
coloured  stationery  sent  by  one  log  of 
wood  to  another  log  of  wood:  it  is  an 
inspiring  and  reassuring  message  of 
high  value.  The  mischief  is  that  so 
many  self-styled  human  beings  are 
just  logs  of  wood,  rather  stylishly 
dressed. 

*  ifc  *  :i! 

And  then  the  custom  of  present-giv- 
ing! What  better  and  more  convinc- 
ing proof  of  sympathy  than  a  gift? 
The  gift  is  one  of  these  obvious  con- 
trivances— like  the  wheel  or  the  lever — 
which  smooth  and  simplify  earthly  life, 
and  the  charm  of  whose  utility  no  ob- 
viousness can  stale.   But  of  course  any 

[42] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

contrivance  can  be  rendered  futile  by 
clumsiness  or  negligence.  There  is  a 
sort  of  Christmas  giver  who  says  pet- 
tishly: "Oh!  I  don't  know  what  to  give 
to  So-and-So  this  Christmas!  What  a 
bother!  I  shall  write  and  tell  her  to 
choose  something  herself,  and  send  the 
bill  to  me!"  And  he  writes.  And  though 
he  does  not  suspect  it,  what  he  really 
writes,  and  what  So-and-So  reads,  is 
this:  "Dear  So-and-So.  It  is  nothing 
to  me  that  you  and  I  are  alive  together 
on  this  planet,  and  in  various  ways 
mutually  dependent.  But  I  am  bound 
by  custom  to  give  you  a  present.  I  do 
not,  however,  take  sufficient  interest  in 
your  life  to  know  what  object  it  would 
give  you  pleasure  to  possess ;  and  I  do 
not  want  to  be  put  to  the  trouble  of 
finding  out,  nor  of  obtaining  the  object 
and  transmitting  it  to  you.    Will  you, 

[43] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

therefore,  buy  something  for  yourself 
and  send  the  bill  to  me.  Of  course,  a 
sense  of  social  decency  will  prevent  you 
from  spending  more  than  a  small  sum, 
and  I  shall  be  spared  all  exertion  be- 
yond signing  a  cheque.  Yours  insin- 
cerely and  loggishly  *  *  *."  So  man- 
aged, the  contrivance  of  present-giving 
becomes  positively  sinister  in  its  work- 
ing. But  managed  with  the  sympa- 
thetic imagination  which  is  infallibly 
produced  by  real  faith  in  goodwill,  its 
efficacy  may  approach  the  miraculous. 
*  *  *  * 

The  Christmas  ceremony  of  good- 
wishing  by  word  of  mouth  has  never 
been  in  any  danger  of  falling  into  in- 
sincerity. Such  is  the  power  of  tradi- 
tion and  virtue  of  a  festival,  and  such 
the  instinctive  brotherliness  of  men, 
that  on  this  day  the  mere  sight  of  an 

[44] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

acquaintance  will  soften  the  voice  and 
warm  the  heart  of  the  most  superior 
sceptic  and  curmudgeon  that  the  age 
of  disillusion  has  produced.  In  spite 
of  himself,  faith  flickers  up  in  him 
again,  be  it  only  for  a  moment.  And, 
during  that  moment,  he  is  almost  like 
those  whose  bright  faith  the  age  has 
never  tarnished,  like  the  great  and  like 
the  simple,  to  whom  it  is  quite  un- 
necessary to  offer  a  defence  and  ex- 
planation of  Christmas  or  to  suggest 
the  basis  of  a  new  faith  therein. 


[46] 


CHAPTER 
FIVE 

DEFENCE  OF  FEASTING 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


FIVE 

DEFENCE  OF  FEASTING 

AND  now  I  can  hear  the  superior 
^  sceptic  disdainfully  questioning: 
"Yes,  but  what  about  the  orgy  of 
Christmas?  What  about  all  the  eating 
and  drinking?"  To  which  I  can  only 
answer  that  faith  causes  effervescence, 
expansion,  joy,  and  that  joy  has  al- 
ways, for  excellent  reasons,  been  con- 
nected with  feasting.  The  very  words 
'feast'  and  'festival'  are  etymologically 
inseparable.  The  meal  is  the  most 
regular  and  the  least  dispensable  of 
daily  events;  it  happens  also  to  be  an 
event  which  is  in  itself  almost  invari- 
ably a  source  of  pleasure,  or,  at  worst, 

[49] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

of  satisfaction:  and  it  will  continue  to 
have  this  precious  quality  so  long  as 
our  souls  are  encased  in  bodies.  What 
could  be  more  natural,  therefore,  than 
that  it  should  be  employed,  with  due 
enlargement  and  ornamentation,  as  the 
kernel  of  the  festival?  What  more 
logical  than  that  the  meal  should  be 
elevated  into  a  feast? 

"But,"  exclaims  the  superior  sceptic, 
"this  idea  involves  the  idea  of  excess!" 
What  if  it  does?  I  would  not  deny  it! 
Assuredly,  a  feast  means  more  than 
enough,  and  more  than  enough  means 
excess.  It  is  only  because  a  feast 
means  excess  that  it  assists  in 
the  bringing  about  of  expansion 
and  joy.  Such  is  human  nature,  and 
it  is  the  case  of  human  nature  that 
we  are  discussing.  Of  course,  excess 
usually  exacts  its  toll,  within  twenty- 

[50] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

four  hours,  especially  from  the  weak. 
But  the  benefit  is  worth  its  price.  The 
body  pays  no  more  than  the  debt  which 
the  soul  has  incurred.  An  occasional 
change  of  habit  is  essential  to  well-be- 
ing, and  every  change  of  habit  results 
in  temporary  derangement  and  incon- 
venience. 

Do  not  misunderstand  me.  Do  not 
push  my  notion  of  excess  to  extremes. 
When  I  defend  the  excess  inevitably 
incident  to  a  feast,  I  am  not  seeking  to 
prove  that  a  man  in  celebrating  Christ- 
mas is  entitled  to  drink  champagne  in 
a  public  restaurant  until  he  becomes  an 
object  of  scorn  and  disgust  to  the  wait- 
ers who  have  travelled  from  Switzer- 
land in  order  to  receive  his  tips.  Much 
less  should  I  be  prepared  to  justify  him 
if,  in  his  own  home,  he  sank  lower  than 
the  hog.    Nor  would  I  sympathetically 

[51] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

carry  him  to  bed.  There  is  such  a 
thing  as  excess  in  moderation  and  dig- 
nity. Every  wise  man  has  practised 
this.  And  he  who  has  not  practised  it 
is  a  fool,  and  deserves  even  a  harder 
name.  He  ought  indeed  to  inhabit  a 
planet  himself,  for  all  his  faith  in  hu- 
manity will  be  exhausted  in  believing 
in  himself.  *  *  *  So  much  for  the 
feast ! 

*  *  *  * 

But  the  accompaniments  of  the  feast 
are  also  excessive.  For  example,  you 
make  a  tug-of-war  with  your  neigh- 
bour at  table,  and  the  rope  is  a  fragile 
packet  of  tinselled  paper,  which  breaks 
with  a  report  like  a  pistol.  You  open 
your  half  of  the  packet,  and  discover 
some  doggerel  verse  which  you  read 
aloud,  and  also  a  perfectly  idiotic  col- 
oured cap,  which  you  put  on  your  head 

[52] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

to  the  end  of  looking  foolish.  And  this 
ceremony  is  continued  until  the  whole 
table  is  surrounded  by  preposterous 
headgear,  and  doggerel  verse  is  lying 
by  every  plate.  Surely  no  man  in  his 
senses,  no  woman  in  hers,  would,  etc., 
etc.  *  *  *  !  But  one  of  the  spiritual 
advantages  of  feasting  is  that  it  ex- 
pands you  beyond  your  common  sense. 
One  excess  induces  another,  and  a  finer 
one.  This  acceptance  of  the  ridiculous 
is  good  for  you.  It  is  particularly  good 
for  an  Anglo-Saxon,  who  is  so  self- 
contained  and  self-controlled  that 
his  soul  might  stiffen  as  the  un- 
used limb  of  an  Indian  fakir  stif- 
fens, were  it  not  for  periodical  excite- 
ments like  that  of  the  Christmas  feast. 
Everybody  has  experienced  the  self- 
conscious  reluctance  which  precedes  the 
putting  on  of  the  cap,   and   the   relief, 

[53] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

followed  by  further  expansion  and 
ecstasy,  which  ensues  after  the  putting 
on.  Everybody  who  has  put  on  a  cap 
is  aware  that  it  is  a  beneficial  thing  to 
put  on  a  cap.  Quite  apart  from  the 
fact  that  the  mysterious  and  fanciful 
race  of  children  are  thereby  placated 
and  appeased,  the  soul  of  the  capped 
one  is  purified  by  this  charming  excess. 
*  *  *  * 

And  the  Tree!  What  an  excess  of 
the  fantastic  to  pretend  that  all  those 
glittering  balls,  those  coloured  candles 
and  those  variegated  parcels  are  the 
blossoms  of  the  absurd  tree !  How  ex- 
cessively grotesque  to  tie  all  those  par- 
cels to  the  branches,  in  order  to  take 
them  off  again !  Surely,  something  less 
mediaeval,  more  ingenious,  more  mod- 
ern than  this  could  be  devised — if  sym- 
bolism is  to  be  indulged  in  at  all!    Can 

[54] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

you  devise  it,  O  sceptical  one,  revelling 
in  disillusion?  Can  you  invent  a  sym- 
bol more  natural  and  graceful  than  the 
symbol  of  the  Tree?  Perhaps  you 
would  have  a  shop-counter,  and  shelves 
behind  it,  so  as  to  instil  early  into  the 
youthful  mind  that  this  is  a  planet  of 
commerce!  Perhaps  you  would  abolish 
the  doggerel  of  crackers,  and  substitute 
therefor  extracts  from  the  Autobio- 
graphy of  Benjamin  Franklin!  Per- 
haps you  would  exchange  the  caps  for 
blazonry  embroidered  w^ith  chemical 
formula,  your  object  being  the  ad- 
vancement of  science!  Perhaps  you 
would  do  away  with  the  orgiastic  eat- 
ing and  drinking,  and  arrange  for  a 
formal  conversation  about  astronomy 
and  the  idea  of  human  fraternity,  upon 
strictly  reasonable  rations  of  shredded 
wheat!      You    would    thus    create    an 

[55] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

original  festival,  and  eliminate  all  fear 
of  a  dyspeptic  morrow.  You  would  im- 
prove the  mind.  And  you  would 
avoid  the  ridiculous.  But  also,  in 
avoiding  the  ridiculous,  you  would 
tumble  into  the  ridiculous,  deeply  and 
hopelessly!  And  think  how  your  very 
original  festival  would  delight  the  par- 
ticipators, how  they  would  look  for- 
ward to  it  with  joy,  and  back  upon  it 
with  pleasurable  regret;  how  their 
minds  would  dwell  sweetly  upon  the 
conception  of  shredded  wheat,  and  how 
their  faith  would  be  encouraged  and 
strengthened  by  the  intellectuality  of 
the  formal  conversation! 

*  *  *  s|c 

He  who  girds  at  an  ancient  estab- 
lished festival  should  reflect  upon  sun- 
dry obvious  truths  before  he  withers 
up  the  said  festival  by  the  sirocco  of  his 

[56] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

contempt.  These  truths  are  as  fol- 
1^  lows: — First,  a  festival,  though  based 
upon  intelligence,  is  not  an  affair  of  the 
intellect,  but  an  affair  of  the  emotions. 
Second,  the  human  soul  can  only  be 
reached  through  the  human  body. 
Third,  it  is  impossible  to  replace  an  an- 
cient festival  by  a  new  one.  Robe- 
spierre, amongst  others,  tried  to  do  so, 
and  achieved  the  absurd.  Reformers, 
heralds  of  new  faiths,  and  rejuvenat- 
ors  of  old  faiths,  have  always,  when 
they  succeeded,  adopted  an  ancient  fes- 
tival, with  all  or  most  of  its  forms,  and 
been  content  to  breathe  into  it  a  new 
spirit  to  replace  the  old  spirit  which 
had  vanished  or  was  vanishing.  Any- 
body who,  persuaded  that  Christmas  is 
not  what  it  was,  feels  that  a  festival 
must  nevertheless  be  preserved,  will  do 
well  to  follow    this    example.      To    be 

[57] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

content  with  the  old  forms  and  to  vital- 
ize them:  that  is  the  problem.  Solve 
it,  and  the  forms  will  soon  begin  to 
adapt  themselves  to  the  process  of  vital- 
ization.  All  history  is  a  witness  in 
proof. 


[58} 


CHAPTER 
SIX 

TO  REVITALIZE 
THE  FESTIVAL 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


SIX 

TO  REVITALIZE  THE  FESTIVAL 

IT  being  agreed,  then,  that  the 
Christmas  festival  has  lost  a  great 
deal  of  its  old  vitality,  and  that,  to  many 
people,  it  is  a  source  of  tedium  and  the 
cause  of  insincerity;  and  it  being 
further  agreed  that  the  difficulty  can- 
not be  got  over  by  simply  abolishing 
the  festival,  as  no  one  really  wants  it  to 
be  abolished;  the  question  remains — 
what  should  be  done  to  vitalize  it?  The 
former  spirit  of  faith,  the  spirit  which 
made  the  great  Christmas  of  the  golden 
days,  has  been  weakened;  but  one  ele- 
ment of  it — that  which  is  founded  on 
the    conviction    that    goodwill    among 

[61] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

men  is  a  prime  necessity  of  reasonable 
living — survives  with  a  certain  vigour, 
though  even  it  has  not  escaped  the  gen- 
eral scepticism  of  the  age.  This  ele- 
ment unites  in  agreement  all  the  pug- 
nacious sectaries  who  join  battle  over 
the  other  elements  of  the  former  faith. 
This  element  has  no  enemies.  None 
will  deny  its  lasting  virtue.  Obviously, 
therefore,  the  right  course  is  to  concen- 
trate on  the  cultivation  of  goodwill. 
If  goodwill  can  be  consciously  in- 
creased, the  festival  of  Christmas  will 
cease  to  be  perfunctory.  It  will  ac- 
quire a  fresh  and  more  genuine  signifi- 
cance, which,  however,  will  not  in  any 
way  inconvenience  those  who  have 
never  let  go  of  the  older  significance. 
No  tradition  will  be  overthrown,  no 
shock  administered,  and  nobody  will  be 
able    to   croak    about    iconoclasm    and 

[63] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

new-fangled  notions  and    the    sudden 
end  of  the  world,  and  so  on. 

*  *  *  * 

The  fancy  of  some  people  will  at 
once  run  to  the  formation  of  a  grand 
international  Society  for  the  revivify- 
ing of  Chi'istmas  by  the  cultivation  of 
goodwill,  with  branches  in  all  the  chief 
cities  of  Europe  and  America,  and 
headquarters — of  course  at  the  Hague ; 
and  committees  and  subcommittees, 
and  presidents  and  vice-presidents; 
and  honorary  secretaries  and  secretar- 
ies paid;  and  quarterly  and  annual 
meetings,  and  triennial  congresses! 
And  a  literary  organ  or  two!  And  a 
badge — naturally  a  badge,  designed  by 
a  famous  artist    in    harmonious    tints! 

*  *  *  * 

But  my  fancy  does  not  run  at  all  in 
this  direction.    I  am  convinced  that  we 

[63] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

have  already  far  too  many  societies  for 
the  furtherance  of  our  ends.  To  my 
mind,  most  societies  with  a  moral  aim 
are  merely  clumsy  machines  for  doing 
simple  jobs  with  the  maximum  of  fric- 
tion, expense  and  inefficiency.  I  should 
define  the  majority  of  these  societies  as 
a  group  of  persons  each  of  whom  ex- 
pects the  others  to  do  something  very 
wonderful.  Why  create  a  society  in 
order  to  help  you  to  perform  some  act 
which  nobody  can  perform  but  your- 
self? No  society  can  cultivate  goodwill 
in  you.  You  might  as  well  create  a  so- 
ciety for  shaving  or  for  saying  your 
prayers.  And  further,  goodwill  is  far 
less  a  process  of  performing  acts  than 
a  process  of  thinking  thoughts.  To 
think,  is  it  necessary  to  involve  your- 
self in  the  cog-wheels  of  a  society? 
Moreover,   a   society   means   fuss   and 

[64] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

shouting:  two  species  of  disturbance 
which  are  both  futile  and  deleterious — 
particularly  in  an  intimate  affair  of 
morals. 

You  can  best  help  the  general  culti- 
vation of  goodwill  along  by  cultivating 
goodwill  in  your  own  heart.  Until  you 
have  started  the  task  of  personal  culti- 
vation, you  will  probably  assume  that 
there  will  be  time  left  over  for  super- 
intending the  cultivation  of  goodwill  in 
other  people's  hearts.  But  a  very  little 
experience  ought  to  show  you  that  this 
is  a  delusion.  You  will  perceive,  if  not 
at  once,  later,  that  you  have  bitten  off 
just  about  as  much  as  you  can  chew. 
And  you  will  appreciate  also  the  wis- 
dom of  not  advertising  your  enterprise. 
Why,  indeed,  should  you  breathe  a 
word  to  a  single  soul  concerning  your 
admirable    intentions?      Rest    assured 

[65] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

that  any  unusual  sprouting  of  the  de- 
sired crop  will  be  instantly  noticed  by 
the  persons  interested. 

*  *  *  # 

The  next  point  is:  Towards  whom 
are  you  to  cultivate  goodwill?  Natur- 
ally, one  would  answer:  Towards  the 
whole  of  humanity.  But  the  whole  of 
humanity,  as  far  as  you  are  concerned, 
amounts  to  naught  but  a  magnificent 
abstract  conception.  And  it  is  very 
difficult  to  cultivate  goodwill  towards 
a  magnificent  abstract  conception.  The 
object  of  goodwill  ought  to  be  clearly 
defined,  and  very  visible  to  the  physi- 
cal eye,  especially  in  the  case  of  people, 
such  as  us,  who  are  only  just  beginning 
to  give  to  the  cultivation  of  goodwill* 
perhaps,  as  much  attention  as  we  give 
to  our  clothes  or  our  tobacco.  If  a  nov- 
ice sets  out  to  embrace  the  whole  of 

[66] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

humanity  in  his  goodwill,  he  will  have 
even  less  success  than  a  young  man  en- 
deavouring to  fall  in  love  with  four  sis- 
ters at  once;  and  his  daily  companions 
— those  who  see  him  eat  his  bacon  and 
lace  his  boots  and  earn  his  living — will 
most  certainly  have  a  rough  time  of  it. 
*  *  *  No!  It  will  be  best  for  you  to 
centre  your  efforts  on  quite  a  small 
group  of  persons,  and  let  the  rest  of 
humanity  struggle  on  as  well  as  it  can, 
with  no  more  of  your  goodwill  than  it 
has  hitherto  had. 

In  choosing  the  small  group  of  peo- 
ple, it  will  be  unnecessary  for  you  to  go 
to  Timbuctoo,  or  into  the  ne?^  street  or 
into  the  next  house.  A^d,  in  this  group 
of  people  you  will  be  wise,  while  neg-i 
lecting  no  member  of  the  group,  to 
specialise  on  one  member.  Your  wife, 
if  you  have  one,  or  your  husband?  Not 

[67] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

necessarily.  I  was  meaning  simply  that 
one  who  most  frequently  annoys  you. 
He  may  be  your  husband,  or  she  may 
be  your  wife.  These  things  happen. 
He  may  be  your  butler.  Or  you  may 
be  his  butler.  She  may  be  your 
daughter,  or  he  may  be  your  father,  and 
you  a  charming  omniscient  girl  of  sev- 
enteen wiser  than  anybody  else.  Who- 
ever he  or  she  may  be  who  oftenest  in- 
spires you  with  a  feeling  of  irritated 
superiority,  aim  at  that  person  in  par- 
ticular. 

The  frequency  of  your  early  failures 
with  him  or  her  will  show  j^ou  how  pru- 
dent you  were  not  to  make  an  attempt 
on  the  whole  of  humanity  at  once.  And 
also  you  will  see  that  you  did  well  not 
to  publish  your  excellent  intentions. 
If  nobody  is  aware  of  your  striving,  no- 
body will  be  aware  that  you  have  failed 

[68] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

in  striving.  Your  successes  will  ap- 
pear effortless,  and — most  important 
of  all — you  will  be  free  from  the  horrid 
curse  of  self-consciousness.  Herein  is 
one  of  the  main  advantages  of  not 
wearing  a  badge.  Lastly,  you  will 
have  the  satisfaction  of  feeling  that,  if 
everybody  else  is  doing  as  you  are,  the 
whole  of  humanity  is  being  attended  to 
after  all.  And  the  comforting  thought 
is  that  very  probably,  almost  certainly, 
quite  a  considerable  number  of  people 
are  in  fact  doing  as  you  are;  some  of 
them — make  no  doubt — are  doing  a 
shade  better.  I  now  come  to  the  actual 
method  of  cultivating  goodwill. 


[691 


CHAPTER 
SEVEN 

THE  GIFT 
OF  ONESELF 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


SEVEN 

THE  GIFT  OF  ONESELF 

CHILDREN  divide  their  adult  ac- 
quaintances into  two  categories — 
those  who  sympathise  with  them  in  the 
bizarre  and  trying  adventure  called  life ; 
and  those  who  don't.  The  second  cate- 
gory is  much  the  larger  of  the  two.  Very 
many  people  belong  to  it  who  think 
that  they  belong  to  the  first.  They  may 
deceive  themselves,  but  they  cannot  de- 
ceive a  child.  Although  you  may 
easily  practise  upon  the  credulity  of  a 
child  in  matters  of  fact,  you  cannot 
cheat  his  moral  and  social  judgment. 
He  will  add  you  up,  and  he  will  add 
anybody  up,  and  he  will  estimate  con- 

[  73  ] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

duct,  upon  principles  of  his  own  and  in 
a  manner  terribly  impartial.  Parents 
have  no  sterner  nor  more  discerning 
critics  than  their  own  children. 

And  so  you  may  be  polite  to  a  child, 
and  pretend  to  appreciate  his  point  of 
view;  but,  unless  you  really  do  put 
yourself  to  the  trouble  of  understand- 
ing him,  unless  you  throw  yourself,  by 
the  exercise  of  imagination,  into  his 
world,  you  will  not  succeed  in  being  his 
friend.  To  be  his  friend  means  an  ef- 
fort on  your  part,  it  means  that  you 
must  divest  yourself  of  your  own  men- 
tal habit,  and,  for  the  time  being,  adopt 
his.  And  no  nice  phrases,  no  gifts  of 
money,  sweets  or  toys,  can  take  the 
place  of  this  effort,  and  this  sacrifice  of 
self.  With  five  minutes  of  genuine 
surrender  to  him,  you  can  win  more  of 
his  esteem  and  gratitude  than  five  hun- 

[74] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

dred  pounds  would  buy.  His  notion 
of  real  goodwill  is  the  imaginative 
sharing  of  his  feelings,  a  convinced 
participation  in  his  pains  and  pleasures. 
He  is  well  aware  that,  if  you  honestly 
do  this,  you  will  be  on  his  side. 

;iti  Ha  *  * 

Now,  adults,  of  course,  are  tremen- 
dously clever  and  accomplished  persons 
and  children  are  no  match  for  them; 
but  still,  with  all  their  talents  and  om- 
niscience and  power,  adults  seem  to 
lack  important  pieces  of  knowledge 
which  children  possess;  they  seem  to 
forget,  and  to  fail  to  profit  by,  their 
infantile  experience.  Else  why  should 
adults  in  general  be  so  extraordinarily 
ignorant  of  the  great  truth  that  the  se- 
cret of  goodwill  lies  in  the  sympathetic 
exercise  of  the  imagination?  Since 
goodwill  is  the  secret  of  human  happi- 

[75] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

ness,  it  follows  that  the  secret  of  good- 
will must  be  one  of  the  most  precious 
aids  to  sensible  living;  and  yet  adults, 
though  they  once  knew  it,  have  gone 
and  forgotten  it!  Children  may  well 
be  excused  for  concluding  that  the 
ways  of  the  adult,  in  their  capricious  ir- 
rationality, are  past  finding  out. 

To  increase  your  goodwill  for  a  fel- 
low creature,  it  is  necessary  to  imagine 
that  you  are  he:  and  nothing  else  is 
necessary.  This  feat  is  not  easy;  but 
it  can  be  done.  Some  people  have  less 
of  the  divine  faculty  of  imagination 
than  others,  but  nobody  is  without  it, 
and,  like  all  other  faculties,  it  improves 
with  use,  just  as  it  deteriorates  with  neg- 
lect. Imagination  is  a  function  of  the 
brain.  In  order  to  cultivate  goodwill 
for  a  person,  you  must  think  frequent- 
ly about  that  person.     You    must    in- 

[76] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

form  yourself  about  all  his  activities. 
You  must  be  able  in  your  mind's  eye  to 
follow  him  hour  by  hour  throughout 
the  day,  and  j^ou  must  ascertain  if  he 
sleeps  well  at  night — because  this  is  not 
a  trifle.  And  you  must  reflect  upon  his 
existence  with  the  same  partiality  as 
you  reflect  upon  your  own.  (Why 
not?)  That  is  to  say,  you  must  lay  the 
fullest  stress  on  his  difliculties,  disap- 
pointments and  unhappinesses,  and  you 
must  minimise  his  good  fortune.  You 
must  magnify  his  efforts  after  right- 
eousness, and  forget  his  failures.  You 
must  ever  remember  that,  after  aU,  he 
is  not  to  blame  for  the  faults  of  his 
character,  which  faults,  in  his  case  as  in 
yours,  are  due  partly  to  heredity  and 
partly  to  environment.  And  beyond 
everything  you  must  always  give  him 
credit  for  good  intentions.  Do  not  you, 

[77] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

though  sometimes  mistakenly,  always 
act  for  the  best?  You  know  you  do! 
And  are  you  alone  among  mortals  in 

rectitude? 

*  *  *  * 

This  mental  exercise  in  relation  to 
another  person  takes  time,  and  it  in- 
volves a  fatiguing  effort.  I  repeat  that 
it  is  not  easy.  Nor  is  it  invariably 
agreeable.  You  may,  indeed,  find  it 
tedious,  for  example,  to  picture  in  vivid 
detail  all  the  worries  that  have  brought 
about  your  wife's  exacerbation — negli- 
gent maid,  dishonest  tradesman,  milk 
in  a  thunder  storm,  hypercritical  hus- 
band, dirt  in  the  wrong  place — but, 
when  you  have  faithfully  done  so,  I 
absolutely  defy  you  to  speak  to  her  in 
the  same  tone  as  you  used  to  employ, 
and  to  cherish  resentment  against  her 
as  you  used  to  do.    And  I   absolutely 

[78  1 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

defj"  you  not  to  feel  less  discontented 
with  yourself  than  in  the  past.  It  is 
impossible  that  the  exercise  of  imagina- 
tion about  a  person  should  not  result 
in  goodwill  towards  that  person.  The 
exercise  may  put  a  strain  upon  you; 
but  its  effect  is  a  scientific  certainty.  It 
is  the  supreme  social  exercise,  for  it  is 
the  giving  of  oneself  in  the  most  inti- 
mate and  complete  sense.  It  is  the  sus- 
pension of  one's  individuality  in  favour 
of  another.  It  establishes  a  new  atti- 
tude of  mind,  which,  though  it  may 
well  lead  to  specific  social  acts,  is  more 
valuable  than  any  specific  act,  for  it  is 
ceaselessly  translating  itself  into  de- 
meanour. 

*  *  *  * 

The  critic  with  that  terrible  English 
trait,  an  exaggerated  sense  of  the  ridi- 
culous, will  at  this  point  probably  re- 

179] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

mark  to  himself,  smiling:  "I  suppose 
the  time  will  come,  when  by  dint  of  reg- 
ular daily  practice,  I  shall  have 
achieved  perfect  goodwill  towards  the 
first  object  of  my  attentions.  I  can 
then  regard  that  person  as  'done.*  I 
can  put  him  on  a  shelf,  and  turn  to  the 
next;  and,  in  the  end,  all  my  relations, 
friends  and  acquaintances  will  be  'done' 
and  I  can  stare  at  them  in  a  row  on  the 
shelf  of  my  mind,  with  pride  and  satis- 
faction *  *  *  ."  Except  that  no  per- 
son will  ever  be  quite  "done,"  human 
nature,  still  being  human,  in  spite  of 
the  recent  advances  of  civilisation,  I  do 
not  deprecate  this  manner  of  stating 
the  case. 

The  ambitious  and  resolute  man, 
with  an  exaggerated  sense  of  the  ridi- 
culous, would  see  nothing  ridiculous  in 
ticking  off  a  number  of  different  ob- 

[80] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

jects  as  they  were  successively  achieved. 
If  for  example  it  was  part  of  his  scheme 
to  learn  various  foreign  languages,  he 
would  know  that  he  could  only  succeed 
by  regular  application  of  the  brain,  by 
concentration  of  thought  daily;  he 
would  also  know  that  he  could  never 
acquire  any  foreign  language  in  abso- 
lute perfection.  Still,  he  would  reach  a 
certain  stage  in  a  language,  and  then  he 
would  put  it  aside  and  turn  to  the  next 
one  on  his  programme,  and  so  on.  As- 
suredly, he  would  not  be  ashamed  of 
employing  method  to  reach  his  end. 

Now  all  that  can  be  said  of  the  ac- 
quirement of  foreign  languages  can  be 
said  of  the  acquirement  of  goodwill. 
In  remedying  the  deficiences  of  the 
heart  and  character,  as  in  remedying 
the  deficiences  of  mere  knowledge,  the 
brain  is  the  sole   possible  instrument, 

[81] 


^ 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

and  the  best  results  will  be  obtained  by- 
using  it  regularly  and  scientifically,  ac- 
cording to  an  arranged  method.  Why, 
therefore,  if  a  man  be  proud  of  method 
in  improving  his  knowledge,  should  he 
see  something  ridiculous  in  a  deliberate 
plan  for  improving  his  heart — the  af- 
fair of  his  heart  being  immensely  more 
important,  more  urgent  and  more  diffi- 
cult? The  reader  who  has  found  even 
one  good  answer  to  the  above  question, 
need  read  no  more  of  this  book,  for  he 
will  have  confounded  me  and  it. 


[821 


CHAPTER 
EIGHT 

THE  FEAST 
OF  ST.  FRIEND 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


EIGHT 

THE  FEAST  OF  ST.   FRIEND 

THE  consequences  of  the  social  self- 
discipline  which  I  have  outlined 
will  be  various.  A  fairly  early  result  will 
be  the  gradual  decline,  and  ultimately 
the  death,  of  the  superior  person  in  one- 
self. It  is  true  that  the  superior  person 
in  oneself  has  nine  lives,  and  is  capable 
of  rising  from  the  dead  after  even  the 
most  fatal  blows.  But,  at  worst,  the 
superior  person — (and  who  among  us 
does  not  shelter  that  sinister  inhabitant 
in  his  soul?) — will  have  a  very  poor 
time  in  the  soul  of  him  who  steadily 
practises  the  imaginative  understand- 
ing of  other  people.    In  the  first  place, 

[85] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

the  mere  exercise  of  the  imagination  on 
others  absolutely  scotches  egotism  as 
long  as  it  lasts,  and  leaves  it  weakened 
afterwards.  And,  in  the  second  and 
more  important  place,  an  improved 
comprehension  of  others  (which  means 
an  intensified  sympathy  with  them) 
must  destroy  the  illusion,  so  wide- 
spread, that  one's  own  case  is  unique. 
The  amicable  study  of  one's  neigh- 
bours on  the  planet  inevitably  shows 
that  the  same  troubles,  the  same  forti- 
tudes, the  same  feats  of  intelligence, 
the  same  successes  and  failures,  are 
constantly  happening  everywhere.  One 
can,  indeed,  see  oneself  in  nearly  every- 
body else,  and,  in  particular,  one  is 
struck  by  the  fact  that  the  quality  in 
which  one  took  most  pride  is  simply 
spread  abroad  throughout  humanity  in 
heaps!  It  is  only  in  sympathetically 
contemplating  others  that  one  can  get 

[86] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

oneself  in  a  true  perspective.  Yet 
probably  the  majority  of  human  beings 
never  do  contemplate  others,  save  with 
the  abstracted  gaze  which  proves  that 
the  gazer  sees    nothing    but    his    own 

dream. 

*  *  *  * 

Another  result  of  the  discipline  is  an 
immensely  increased  interest  in  one's 
friends.  One  regards  them  even  with 
a  sort  of  proprietary  interest,  for,  by 
imagination,  one  has  come  into  sym- 
pathetic possession  of  them.  Further, 
one  has  for  them  that  tender  feeling 
which  always  follows  the  conferring  of 
a  benefit,  especially  the  secret  confer- 
ring of  a  benefit.  It  is  the  benefactor, 
not  the  person  benefited,  who  is  grate- 
ful. The  benefit  which  one  has  con- 
ferred is,  of  course,  the  gift  of  oneself. 
The  resulting  emotion  is  independent 
of  any  sympathy  rendered  by  the  other ; 

[87 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

and  where  the  sympathy  is  felt  to  be 
mutual,  friendship  acquires  a  new  sig- 
nificance. The  exercise  of  sympathetic 
imagination  will  cause  one  to  look  upon 
even  a  relative  as  a  friend — a  startling 
achievement!  It  will  provide  a  new 
excitement  and  diversion  in  life. 

When  the  month  of  December 
dawns,  there  need  be  no  sensation  of 
weary  apprehension  about  the  diffi- 
culty of  choosing  a  present  that  will 
suit  a  friend.  Certainly  it  will  not  be 
necessary,  from  sheer  indifference  and 
ignorance,  to  invite  the  friend  to  choose 
his  own  present.  On  the  contrary,  one 
will  be,  in  secret,  so  intimate  with  the 
friend's  situation  and  wants  and  de- 
sires, that  sundry  rival  schemes  for 
pleasuring  him  will  at  once  offer  them- 
selves. And  when  he  receives  the  pres- 
ent finally  selected,  he  will  have  the 
conviction,  always  delightfully  flatter- 

[88] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

ing  to  a  donee,  that  he  has  been  the  ob- 
ject of  a  particular  attention  and  in- 
sight. *  *  *  And  when  the  cards  of 
greeting  are  despatched,  formal 
phrases  will  go  forth  charged,  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  sender,  with  a  gen- 
uine meaning,  with  the  force  of  a  cli- 
max, as  though  the  sender  had  written 
thereon,  in  invisible  ink:  "I  have  had 
you  well  in  mind  during  the  last  twelve 
months;  I  think  I  understand  your 
difficulties  and  appreciate  your  efforts 
better  than  I  did,  and  so  it  is  with  a 
peculiar  sympathetic  knowledge  that  I 
wish  you  good  luck.  I  have  guessed 
what  particular  kind  of  good  luck  you 
require,  and  I  wish  accordingly.  My 
wish  is  not  vague  and  perfunctory 
only." 

4c  *  *  * 

And  on  the  day  of  festival  itself  one 
feels  that  one  really  has  something  to 

[89] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

celebrate.  The  occasion  has  a  basis,  if 
it  had  no  basis  for  one  before;  and  if  a 
basis  previously  existed,  then  it  is  wid- 
ened and  strengthened.  The  festival 
becomes  a  public  culmination  to  a  pri- 
vate enterprise.  One  is  not  reminded 
by  Christmas  of  goodwill,  because  the 
enterprise  of  imaginative  sympathy  has 
been  a  daily  affair  throughout  the  year; 
but  Christmas  provides  an  excuse  for 
taking  satisfaction  in  the  success  of  the 
enterprise  and  new  enthusiasm  to  cor- 
rect its  failures.  The  symbolism  of  the 
situation  of  Christmas,  at  the  turn  of 
the  year,  develops  an  added  impressive- 
ness,  and  all  the  Christmas  customs,  apt 
to  produce  annoyance  in  the  breasts  of 
the  unsentimental,  are  accepted  with  in- 
dulgence, even  with  eagerness,  because 
their  symbolism  also  is  shown  in  a 
clearer  light.      Christmas    becomes   as 

[90] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

personal  as  a  birthday.  One  eats  and 
drinks  to  excess,  not  because  it  is  the 
custom  to  eat  and  drink  to  excess,  but 
from  sheer  effervescent  faith  in  an  idea. 
And  as  one  sits  with  one's  friends,  pos- 
sessing them  in  the  privacy  of  one's 
heart,  permeated  by  a  sense  of  the  value 
of  sympathetic  comprehension  in  this 
formidable  adventure  of  existence  on  a 
planet  that  rushes  eternally  through 
the  night  of  space ;  assured  indeed  that 
companionship  and  mutual  understand- 
ing alone  make  the  adventure  agree- 
able,— one  sees  in  a  flash  that  Christ- 
mas, whatever  else  it  may  be,  is  and 
must  be  the  Feast  of  St.  Friend,  and 
a  day  on  that  account  supreme  among 
the  days  of  the  year. 

V  •!•  T*  I* 

The  third  and  greatest  consequence 
of  the  systematic  cultivation   of   good- 

[91] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

will  now  grows  blindingly  apparent. 
To  state  it  earlier  in  all  its  crudity 
would  have  been  ill-advised;  and  I  pur- 
posely refrained  from  doing  so.  It  is 
the  augmentation  of  one's  own  happi- 
ness. The  increase  of  amity,  the  dim- 
inution of  resentment  and  annoyance, 
the  regular  maintenance  of  an  attitude 
mildly  benevolent  towards  mankind, — ■ 
these  things  are  the  surest  way  to  hap- 
piness. And  it  is  because  they  are  the 
surest  way  to  happiness,  that  the  most 
enlightened  go  after  them.  All  real 
motives  are  selfish  motives;  were  it 
otherwise  humanity  would  be  utterly 
different  from  what  it  is.  A  man  may 
perform  some  act  which  will  benefit 
another  while  working-  some  striking 
injury  to  himself.  But  his  reason  for 
doing.it  is  that  he  prefers  the  evil  of 
the  injury  to  the    deeper    evil    of    the 

[92] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

fundamental  dissatisfaction  which 
would  torment  him  if  he  did  not  per- 
form the  act.  Nobody  yet  sought  the 
good  of  another  save  as  a  means  to  his 
own  good.  And  it  is  in  accordance 
with  common  sense  that  this  should  be 
so.  There  is,  however,  a  lower  egotism 
and  a  higher.  It  is  the  latter  which  we 
call  unselfishness.  And  it  is  the  latter  of 
which  Christmas  is  the  celebration.  We 
shall  legitimately  bear  in  mind,  there- 
fore, that  Christmas,  in  addition  to  be- 
ing the  Feast  of  St.  Friend,  is  even 
more  profoundly  the  feast  of  one's  own 
welfare. 


[03] 


CHAPTER 

NINE 

THE  REACTION 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


NINE 

THE    REACTION 

A  REACTION  sets  in  between 
Christmas  and  the  New  Year.  It 
is  inevitable;  and  I  should  be  writing 
basely  if  I  did  not  devote  to  it  a  full 
chapter.  In  those  few  dark  days  of  in- 
activity, between  a  fete  and  the  resump- 
tion of  the  implacable  daily  round,  when 
the  weather  is  usually  cynical,  and  we 
are  paying  in  our  tissues  the  fair  price 
of  excess,  we  see  life  and  the  world  in  a 
grey  and  sinister  light,  which  we  imag- 
ine to  be  the  only  true  light.  Take  the 
case  of  the  average  successful  man  of 
thirty-five.  What  is  he  thinking  as  he 
lounges  about  on  the  day  after  Christ- 
mas? 

[97] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

His  thoughts  probably  run  thus: 
"Even  if  I  live  to  a  good  old  age,  which 
is  improbable,  as  many  years  lie  behind 
me  as  before  me.  I  have  lived  half  my 
life,  and  perhaps  more  than  half  my 
life.  I  have  realised  part  of  my  world- 
ly ambition.  I  have  made  many  good 
resolutions,  and  kept  one  or  two  of 
them  in  a  more  or  less  imperfect  man- 
ner. I  cannot,  as  a  commonsense  per- 
son, hope  to  keep  a  larger  proportion 
of  good  resolutions  in  the  future  than  I 
have  kept  in  the  past.  I  have  tried  to 
understand  and  sympathise  with  my 
fellow  creatures,  and  though  I  have  not 
entirely  failed  to  do  so,  I  have  nearly 
failed.  I  am  not  happy  and  I  am  not 
content.  And  if,  after  all  these  years, 
I  am  neither  happy  nor  content,  what 
chance  is  there  of  my  being  happy  and 

[98] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

content  in  the  second  half  of  my  life? 
The  realisation  of  part  of  my  worldly 
ambition  has  not  made  me  any  happier, 
and,  therefore,  it  is  unlikely  that  the 
realisation  of  the  whole  of  my  ambition 
will  make  me  any  happier.  My 
strength  cannot  improve;  it  can  only 
weaken;  and  my  health  likewise.  I  in 
my  turn  am  coming  to  believe — what 
as  a  youth  I  rejected  with  disdain — 
namely,  that  happiness  is  what  one  is 
not,  and  content  is  what  one  has  not. 
Why,  then,  should  I  go  on  striving 
after  the  impossible?  Why  should  I 
not  let  things  slide?" 

Thus  reflects  the  average  successful 
man,  and  there  is  not  one  of  us,  success- 
ful or  unsuccessful,  ambitious  or  unam- 
bitious, whose  reflections  have  not  oft- 
en led  him  to  a  conclusion  equally  dis- 

[99] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

satisfied.     Why  should    I    or  anybody 
pretend  that  this  is  not  so? 

*  *  *  5f: 

And  yet,  in  the  very  moment  of  his 
discouragement  and  of  his  blackest 
vision  of  things,  that  man  knows  quite 
well  that  he  will  go  on  striving.  He 
knows  that  his  instinct  to  strive  will  be 
stronger  than  his  genuine  conviction 
that  the  desired  end  cannot  be  achieved. 
Positive  though  he  may  be  that  a  world- 
ly ambition  realised  will  produce  the 
same  dissatisfaction  as  Dead  Sea  fruit 
in  the  mouth,  he  will  still  continue  to 
struggle.  *  *  *  Now  you  cannot  argue 
against  facts,  and  this  is  a  fact.  It 
must  be  accepted.  Conduct  must  be 
adjusted  to  it.  The  struggle  being  in- 
evitable, it  must  be  carried  through  as 
well  as  it  can  be  carried  through.  It 
will  not  end  brilliantly,  but  precautions 

[100] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

can  be  taken  against  it  ending  disgrace- 
fully. These  precautions  consist  in  the 
devising  of  a  plan  of  campaign,  and 
the  plan  of  campaign  is  defined  by  a 
series  of  resolutions:  which  resolutions 
are  generally  made  at  or  immediately 
before  the  beginning  of  a  New  Year. 
Without  these  the  struggle  would  be 
formless,  confused,  blind  and  even 
more  futile  than  it  is  with  them.  Or- 
ganised effort  is  bound  to  be  less  inef- 
fective than  unorganised  effort. 
*  *  *  * 

A  worldly  ambition  can  be,  frequent- 
ly is,  realised:  but  an  ideal  cannot  be 
attained — if  it  could,  it  would  not  be 
an  ideal.  The  virtue  of  an  ideal  is  its 
unattainability.  It  seems,  when  it  is 
first  formed,  just  as  attainable  as  a 
worldly  ambition  which  indeed  is  often 
schemed  as  a  means  to  it.    After  twen- 

[101] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

ty-foiir  hours,  the  ideal  is  all  but  at- 
tained. After  forty-eight,  it  is  a  little 
farther  off.  After  a  week,  it  has  re- 
ceded still  further.  After  a  month  it  is 
far  away;  and  towards  the  end  of  a 
year  even  the  keen  eye  of  hope  has  al- 
most lost  sight  of  it;  it  is  definitely 
withdrawn  from  the  practical  sphere. 
And  then,  such  is  the  divine  obstinacy 
of  humanity,  the  turn  of  the  year  gives 
us  an  excuse  for  starting  afresh,  and 
forming  a  new  ideal,  and  forgetting 
our  shame  in  yet  another  organised  ef- 
fort. Such  is  the  annual  circle  of  the 
ideal,  the  effort,  the  failure  and  the 
shame.  A  rather  pitiful  history  it  may 
appear!  And  yet  it  is  also  rather  a 
splendid  history!  For  the  failure  and 
the  shame  are  due  to  the  splendour  of 
our  ideal  and  to  the  audacity  of  our 
faith  in  ourselves.    It  is  only  in  com- 

[102] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

parison  with  our  ideal  that  we  have 
fallen  low.  We  are  higher,  in  our  fail- 
ure and  our  shame,  than  we  should 
have  been  if  we  had  not  attempted  to 
rise. 

*  *  *  * 

There  are  those  who  will  say:  "At 
any  rate,  we  might  moderate  somewhat 
the  splendour  of  our  ideal  and  the  au- 
dacity of  our  self-conceit,  so  that  there 
should  be  a  less  grotesque  disparity  be- 
tween the  aim  and  the  achievement. 
Surely  such  moderation  would  be  more 
in  accord  with  common  sense!  Surely 
it  would  lessen  the  spiritual  fatigue  and 
disappointment  caused  by  sterile  en- 
deavour!" It  would.  But  just  try  to 
moderate  the  ideal  and  the  self-conceit! 
And  you  will  find,  in  spite  of  all  your 
sad  experiences,  that  you  cannot.  If 
there  is  the  stuff  of  a  man  in  you,  you 

[103] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

simply  cannot!  The  truth  is  that,  in 
the  supreme  things,  a  man  does  not  act 
under  the  rules  of  earthly  common 
sense.  He  transcends  them,  because 
there  is  a  quality  in  him  which  compels 
him  to  do  so.  Common  sense  may  per- 
suade him  to  attempt  to  keep  down  the 
ideal,  and  self-conceit  may  pretend  to 
agree.  But  all  the  time,  self-conceit 
will  be  whispering:  "I  can  go  one  bet- 
ter than  that."  And  lo!  the  ideal  is 
furtively  raised  again. 

A  man  really  has  little  scientific  con- 
trol over  the  height  of  his  ideal  and  the 
intensity  of  his  belief  in  himself.  He 
is  born  with  them,  as  he  is  born  with  a 
certain  pulse  and  a  certain  reflex  ac- 
tion. He  can  neglect  the  ideal,  so  that 
it  almost  dissolves,  but  he  cannot 
change  its  height.  He  can  maim  his 
belief  in  himself  by  persistent  abandon- 

[104] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

ment  to  folly,  but  he  cannot  lower  its 
flame  by  an  effort  of  the  will,  as  he 
might  lower  the  flame  of  a  gas  by  a 
calculated  turn  of  the  hand.  In  the 
secret  and  inmost  constitution  of  hu- 
manity it  is  ordained  that  the  disparity 
between  the  aim  and  the  achievement 
shall  seem  grotesque ;  it  is  ordained  that 
there  shall  be  an  enormous  fuss  about 
pretty  nearly  nothing;  it  is  ordained 
that  the  mountain  shall  bring  forth  a 
mouse.  But  it  is  also  ordained  that  men 
shall  go  blithely  on  just  the  same,  ignor- 
ing in  practice  the  ridiculousness  which 
they  admit  in  theory,  and  drawing  re- 
newed hope  and  conceit  from  some 
magic,  exhaustless  source.  And  this  is 
the  whole  philosophy  of  the  New  Year's 
resolution. 


[105] 


CHAPTER 
TEN 

ON  THE  LAST  DAY 
OF  THE  YEAR 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 


TEN 

ON   THE  LAST  DAY   OF  THE  YEAR 

THERE  are  few  people  who  arrive 
at  a  true  understanding  of  life, 
even  in  the  calm  and  disillusioned  hours 
of  reflection  that  come  between  the  end 
of  one  annual  period  and  the  beginning 
of  another.  Nearly  everybody  has  an 
idea  at  the  back  of  his  head  that  if  only 
he  could  conquer  certain  difficulties  and 
embarrassments,  he  might  really  start 
to  live  properly,  in  the  full  sense  of 
living.  And  if  he  has  pluck  he  says  to 
himself:  "I  will  smooth  things  out, 
and  then  I'll  really  live."  In  the  same 
way,  nearly  everybody,  regarding  the 
spectacle  of  the  world,  sees  therein  a 

[109] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

principle  which  he  calls  Evil;  and  he 
thinks:  "If  only  we  could  get  rid  of 
this  Evil,  if  only  we  could  set  things 
right,  how  splendid  the  world  would 
be!"  Now,  in  the  meaning  usually  at- 
tached to  it,  there  is  no  such  positive 
principle  as  Evil.  Assuming  that  there 
is  such  a  positive  principle  in  a  given 
phenomenon — such  as  the  character  of 
a  particular  man — you  must  then  ad- 
mit that  there  is  the  same  positive  prin- 
ciple everywhere,  for  just  as  the  char- 
acter of  no  man  is  so  imperfect  that 
you  could  not  conceive  a  worse,  so  the 
character  of  no  man  is  so  perfect  that 
you  could  not  conceive  a  better.  Do 
away  with  Evil  from  the  world,  and  you 
would  not  merely  abolish  certain  spe- 
cially distressing  matters,  you  would 
change  everything.  You  would  in  fact 
achieve  perfection.    And  when  we  say 

[110] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

that  one  thing  is  evil  and  another  good, 
all  that  we  mean  is  that  one  thing  is  less 
advanced  than  another  in  the  way  of 
perfection.  Evil  cannot  therefore  be  a 
positive  principle;  it  signifies  only  the 
falling  short  of  perfection. 

And  supposing  that  the  desires  of 
mankind  were  suddenly  fulfilled,  and 
the  world  was  rendered  perfect!  There 
would  be  no  motive  for  effort,  no  alter- 
cation of  conflicting  motives  in  the  hu- 
man heart ;  nothing  to  do,  no  one  to  be- 
friend, no  anxiety,  no  want  unsatisfied. 
Equilibrium  would  be  established.  A 
cheerful  world!  You  can  see  instantly 
how  amusing  it  would  be.  It  would 
have  only  one  drawback — that  of  being 
dead.  Its  reason  for  being  alive  would 
have  ceased  to  operate.  Life  means 
change  through  constant  development. 
But  you  cannot  develop  the  perfect. 
The  perfect  can  merely  expire. 
[Ill] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

That  average  successful  man  whom  I 
have  previously  cited  feels  all  this  by 
instinct,  though  he  does  not  compre- 
hend it  by  reason.  He  reaches  his  am- 
bition, and  retires  from  the  fight  in  or- 
der to  enjoy  life, — and  what  does  he 
then  do?  He  immediately  creates  for 
himself  a  new  series  of  difficulties  and 
embarrassments,  either  by  undertaking 
the  management  of  a  large  estate,  or  by 
some  other  device.  If  he  does  not  main- 
tain for  himself  conditions  which  neces- 
sitate some  kind  of  struggle,  he  quick- 
ly dies — spiritually  or  physically,  often 
both.  The  proportion  of  men  who,  hav- 
ing established  an  equilibriimi,  proceed 
to  die  on  the  spot,  is  enormous.  Con- 
tinual effort,  which  means,  of  course, 
continual  disappointment,  is  the  sine 
qua  non — without  it  there  is  literally 
nothing  vital.    Its  abolition  is  the  abol- 

[112] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

ition  of  life.  Hence,  people,  who,  fail- 
ing to  savour  the  struggle  itself,  antici- 
pate the  end  of  the  struggle  as  the  be- 
ginning of  joy  and  happiness — these 
people  are  simply  missing  life ;  they  are 
longing  to  exchange  life  for  death.  The 
hemlock  would    save    them    a    lot    of 

weary  waiting. 

*  *  *  * 

We  shall  now  perceive,  I  think,  what 
is  wrong  with  the  assumptions  of  the 
average  successful  man  as  set  forth  in 
the  previous  chapter.  In  postulating 
that  happiness  is  what  one  is  not,  he  has 
got  hold  of  a  mischievous  conception  of 
happiness.  Let  him  examine  his  con- 
ception of  happiness,  and  he  will  find 
that  it  consists  in  the  enjoyment  of 
love  and  luxury,  and  in  the  freedom 
from  enforced  effort.  He  generally 
wants  all  three  ingredients.    Now  pas- 

[113] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

sionate  love  does  not  mean  happiness; 
it  means  excitement,  apprehension  and 
continually  renewed  desire.  And  af- 
fectionate love,  from  which  the  passion 
has  faded,  means  something  less  than 
happiness,  for,  mingled  with  its  gentle 
tranquility  is  a  disturbing  regret  for 
the  more  fiery  past.  Luxury,  accord- 
ing to  the  universal  experience  of  those 
who  have  had  it,  has  no  connection 
whatever  with  happiness.  And  as  for 
freedom  from  enforced  effort,  it  means 
simply  death. 

Happiness  as  it  is  dreamed  of  cannot 
possibly  exist  save  for  brief  periods  of 
self-deception  which  are  followed  by 
terrible  periods  of  reaction.  Real, 
practicable  happiness  is  due  primarily 
not  to  any  kind  of  environment,  but  to 
an  inward  state  of  mind.  Real  happi- 
ness consists  first  in  acceptance  of  the 

[114] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

fact  that  discontent  is  a  condition  of 
life,  and,  second,  in  an  honest  endeav- 
our to  adjust  conduct  to  an  ideal.  Real 
happiness  is  not  an  affair  of  the  future; 
it  is  an  affair  of  the  present.  Such  as 
it  is,  if  it  cannot  be  obtained  now,  it  can 
never  be  obtained.  Real  happiness 
lives  in  patience,  having  comprehended 
that  if  very  little  is  accomplished  to- 
wards perfection,  so  a  man's  existence 
is  a  very  little  moment  in  the  vast  ex- 
panse of  the  universal  life,  and  having 
also  comprehended  that  it  is  the  strug- 
gle which  is  vital,  and  that  the  end  of 
the  struggle  is  only  another  name  for 
death. 

;(:  4c  :{:  * 

"Well,"  I  hear  you  exclaiming,  "if 
this  is  all  we  can  look  forward  to,  if  this 
is  all  that  real,  practicable  happiness 
amounts  to,  is  life  worth  living?"    That 

[115] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

is  a  question  which  each  person  has  to 
answer  for  himself.  If  he  answers  it  in 
the  negative,  no  argument,  no  persua- 
sion, no  sentimentalisation  of  the  facts 
of  life,  will  make  him  alter  his  opinion. 
Most  people,  however,  answer  it  in  the 
affirmative.  Despite  all  the  drawbacks, 
despite  all  the  endless  disappointments, 
they  decide  that  life  is  worth  living. 
There  are  two  species  of  phenomena 
which  bring  them  to  this  view.  The 
first  may  be  called  the  golden  moments 
of  life,  which  seem  somehow  in  their 
transient  brevity  to  atone  for  the  dull 
exasperation  of  interminable  mediocre 
hours:  moments  of  triumph  in  the 
struggle,  moments  of  fierce  exultant  re- 
solve; moments  of  joy  in  nature — mo- 
ments which  defy  oblivion  in  the  mem- 
ory, and  which,  being  priceless,  cannot 
be  too  dearly  bought. 

[116] 


THE  FEAST  OF  ST  FRIEND 

The  second  species  of  compensatory 
phenomena  are  all  the  agreeable  ex- 
periences connected  with  human  friend- 
ship ;  the  general  feeling,  under  diverse 
forms,  that  one  is  not  alone  in  the 
world.  It  is  for  the  multiplication  and 
intensification  of  these  phenomena  that 
Christmas,  the  Feast  of  St.  Friend,  ex- 
ists. And,  on  the  last  day  of  the  year, 
on  the  eve  of  a  renewed  effort,  our 
thoughts  may  profitably  be  centered 
upon  a  plan  of  campaign  whose  execu- 
tion shall  result  in  a  less  imperfect  in- 
tercourse. 


[117] 


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